The Informatics and Gene Expression Core (IGEC) serves to provide resources and perform services for SPORE Projects I-IV as well as for future developmental and pilot projects. The IGEC will facilitate the accomplishment and integration of SPORE research objectives involving studies of large-scale gene expression in a timely and cost efficient manner, and will also serve as a resource for collaborative studies and technology evaluation and dissemination with other SPOREs. A major activity of the IGEC will be the construction and analysis of specialized cDNA arrays for largescale transcript expression studies. We are well positioned to provide this resource by virtue of our efforts to develop a prostate-centric gene expression orientation with the following resources: ..Development of an informatics resource termed the Prostate Expression Database (PEDB). ..Production and assembly of Expressed Sequence Tags (ESTs) for gene identification in prostate tissues. ..Production of cDNA libraries and sets of cDNA clones derived from a wide variety of normal and neoplastic prostate tissue components. ..Development and application of cDNA Expression Array Technology to prostate carcinogenesis. ..Development and application of Proteomics Technology to prostate carcinogenesis. The IGEC will provide: 1 .Software and hardware support for investigators using sequence homology comparison algorithms and other DNA and protein sequence analysis tools; 2. DNA/cDNA-clone sequence retrieval service to deliver specific cDNA and genomic clones to Project investigators for bench experiments; 3. High quality and rapid turn-around DNA sequencing support service to facilitate the verification of cDNA clones identified by investigators as interesting by virtue of differential expression studies; 4. High-quality cDNA microarrays with support for experimental design, procedures, and analysis of results. 5. Microarray-based Comparative Genome Hybridization (CGH). 6. Mass Spectrometry-based peptide/protein identification and quantitation with informatics support. 7. Statistical support for the analysis of large-scale transcript/protein expression data (Conjunction with Core C); 8. Database archiving of IGEC data for secure storage with rapid Website access/dissemination to Projects and collaborators. (Conjunction with Cores B and C).